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Four of Butterfly’s portfolio companies have been selected to appear among the best companies at Slush. Connexbird, Fourdeg and NaturVention were selected into TOP100 early stage companies list and Kyynel into TOP50 growth companies list. Meanwhile, Butterfly has been active also on the investment front. The new investments are Ceruus, Augumenta, Alpakka Media and Asmo Charger.

”It was nice to notice that four of our portfolio companies were selected among the best of Slush. Selection is a real achievement as selections were made from a group of over thousand international startups and only 10% of them are among this elite group.” tells Juho Risku, who leads the startup development at Butterfly, ”Our portfolio seems to be performing a lot better than average also from this respect, as half of our portfolio companies who were available for selection were also picked.”

Butterfly has invested so far 2.7 million euro in investment rounds totaling up to 7.2 million euro. In less than two years Butterfly has found 21 companies into its portfolio and completed over 41 investment rounds into those companies. Companies have been selected from the analyzed 500 companies, out of which 25% have been looked at more closely as investment targets. During the first half of 2014 every seventh early stage venture capital investment in Finland were Butterfly’s.

”Our portfolio has been growing even a bit faster than expected. In a short period of time we have been able to achieve a significant position within the early stage venture capital in Finland.” says CEO of Butterfly Ventures, Matti Kanninen, ”I am most delighted that more and more often the founder team has consciously wanted us in particular as their investor and coaching partner. It is thus likely that by the end of the year the number of our portfolio companies will grow further by at least two or three companies.”

Enquiries and additional information:

Butterfly Ventures

Butterfly Ventures is an early stage focused startup development and venture fund management company located in Oulu, Finland. Behind the company are Matti Kanninen, Ville Heikkinen and Juho Risku as well as Board members Antti Kosunen, Jukka Mäkinen and Jari Pasanen. Butterfly Ventures has offices in Oulu and Helsinki.

Northern Startup Funds – Leverage from the EU

Northern Startup Fund is a venture capital fund managed by Butterfly Ventures that invests into early stage startups. It is the first asymmetric fund in Finland. In the case of Northern Startup Funds the asymmetry means that the public investor, which benefits also in a form of tax income, lowers the risk of a private investor by offering a possibility for returning the invested capital and profit share before the public investor. From the private investors’ point of view this improves the risk – return expectation ratio significantly. The public investors in the Northern Startup Funds are the City of Oulu and the European Regional Development Fund (the Northern Ostrobothnia Centre for Economic Development, the European Union). The investment capital of Northern Startup Fund is at the moment 10 million euro.

Butterfly Ventures continues investment activities at a high pace. During the first half of 2014 its total investment volume tripled. Butterfly has now invested, together with its co-investors, 6M euro in total. Compared to the whole year 2013, the growth is more than 4.5M euro. New portfolio companies during the first half of 2014 are: Realsource, Naturvention, Sapotech, Sarokal Test Systems, Pint Please and Kyynel. One of the cases will remain un-published at this stage.

”We have reached a good pace in our investment activities. Our efficiency is based on the due diligence investment model we’ve developed. It allows us to invest into startups with high return expectations swiftly and cost-efficiently already very early on. It also mitigates the risks associated with a single investee company.” says CEO of Butterfly Ventures, Matti Kanninen, “The quality of startups in our dealflow has been a positive surprise. I trust we can further increase our investment volume next year. The progress of our portfolio companies also creates opportunities for follow-on investments including larger rounds. We will make additional 4-5 first time investments as well as several follow-on investments into our portfolio before the end of this year. Our own investment volume thereby increases to some three million euro.”

Currently, the portfolio of Butterfly consists of 17 companies. They have been selected from the analyzed 450 companies, out of which 25% have been looked at more closely as investment targets. At the time of Butterfly’s first investment, 20% of the portfolio companies had revenue. Approximately 6 months thereafter, roughly 80% of them had revenue. Butterfly’s portfolio companies employ approximately 100 people in total.

”The due diligence investment model has worked very well, so far there hasn’t been any really serious setbacks. Of course some of those are expected as well. Otherwise we would probably have taken too little risk.” says Juho Risku, who leads the startup development at Butterfly, “We are actively discussing with international investors and it seems that our portfolio companies gather also wider interest. In some cases we already have to even think who will fit into investment round.”

Enquiries and additional information

Butterfly Ventures

Butterfly Ventures is an early stage focused startup development and venture fund management company located in Oulu, Finland. Behind the company are Matti Kanninen, Ville Heikkinen and Juho Risku as well as Board members Antti Kosunen, Jukka Mäkinen and Jari Pasanen. Butterfly Ventures has offices in Oulu and Helsinki.

Northern Startup Funds – Leverage from the EU

Northern Startup Fund is a venture capital fund managed by Butterfly Ventures that invests into early stage startups. It is the first asymmetric fund in Finland. In the case of Northern Startup Funds the asymmetry means that the public investor, which benefits also in a form of tax income, lowers the risk of a private investor by offering a possibility for returning the invested capital and profit share before the public investor. From the private investors’ point of view this improves the risk – return expectation ratio significantly. The public investors in the Northern Startup Funds are the City of Oulu and the European Regional Development Fund (the Northern Ostrobothnia Centre for Economic Development, the European Union). The investment capital of Northern Startup Fund is at the moment 10 million euro.

Realsource is a commercial real estate marketplace. It is an online service for investors to find commercial real estate and a very efficient way of selling commercial real estates for sellers. For the investor Realsource gives all the information the investor needs to decide to commit to a bidding process. On the other hand it helps the seller find as many potential investors as possible thus helping to get better selling price. The total annual transaction volume in commercial real estate sector was between 30-35 billion USD in the Nordics and appr. 200 billion USD in 2013 in the EMEA, the trend being rising. Based on current agreements Realsource will get 0.2% of transaction volume. This results 70M revenue potential in Nordics alone and 400M in Europe.

For buyer Realsource provides advanced tools for comparing the commercial properties and making smart purchase decisions.

Prior to Butterfly’s investment Realsource had developed fully functional beta site and secured a major Finish property owner as a customer for the first year.

“Internet has transformed almost every line of business, including most of real estate sector. For some reason, however, commercial real estate sector is still mostly relying on traditional ways of doing business. We’re going to disrupt that. One of Butterfly’s strengths is their knowledge of online businesses, that’s exactly what we need. We also liked their agile approach to business development as well as international networks.” (Markku Aho, Founder of Realsource)

Butterfly invested into Realsource because of balanced team with both excellent technological skills and experience as well as extraordinarily deep understanding of commercial property market. The product has very mature feel with unique set of features not seen yet in online commercial property trade. Furthermore Realsource had first significant customer signed in and there’s market opportunity worth at least hundreds of millions. Butterfly’s investment will be used to further develop the product, attract property inventory as well as validate the business model and value proposition.

Butterfly Ventures continues investment activities at high pace. During its first year of operations 2013 it has completed its own target of ten new first time investments. The newest investments are: CreateTrips, Laturi Corporation and Conexbird. Furthermore, with the agreement signed today Butterfly Ventures has increased the amount of equity under management by five million euro, totaling now ten million euro.

“Butterfly has started really well also from the City of Oulu’s point of view. The investments have been made in particular into early stage startups, and the positive effects of Northern Startup Fund are already evident.” told Juha Ala-Mursula from Business Oulu. “At the time of investment two of the startups had revenue, now eight of them have. Also the fact that the number of employees after the investment in these companies has already increased nearly 30% is great news for Oulu.” he added.

Based on the actual realized figures, the fund size of ten million euro adds up to some twenty million euro worth of equity financing in total.

”We’re very happy for the increase of funds under our management at this particular moment, as the prospects for new first time investments are great. This is good news also for our portfolio companies. Several of them are approaching a stage where their business model has been validated and therefore follow-on investments are becoming current. Butterfly is now better equipped to support its portfolio companies through this rapid growth phase, which brings stability for the companies and further accelerates their growth.” said Matti Kanninen, CEO of Butterfly Ventures.

So far, Butterfly has invested together with other investors in total of 1.4M euro into ten portfolio companies. Of this amount Butterfly has invested 600 000 euro. In addition to local investors, also US angel investors have participated in the financing rounds. The portfolio companies were selected from the deal flow of 300 companies. Butterfly aims to do ten new first time investments also during 2014. In addition, the annual volume of investments is planned to grow into 1-3 million euro.

Enquiries and additional information

Butterfly Ventures

Butterfly Ventures is an early stage focused startup development and venture fund management company located in Oulu, Finland. Behind the company are Matti Kanninen, Antti Kosunen and Juho Risku as well as Board members Jukka Mäkinen and Jari Pasanen. Butterfly Ventures has offices in Oulu and Helsinki.

Northern Startup Funds – Leverage from the EU

Northern Startup Fund is a venture capital fund managed by Butterfly Ventures that invests into early stage startups. It is the first asymmetric fund in Finland. In the case of Northern Startup Funds the asymmetry means that the public investor, which benefits also in a form of tax income, lowers the risk of a private investor by offering a possibility for returning the invested capital and profit share before the public investor. From the private investors’ point of view this improves the risk – return expectation ratio significantly. The public investors in the Northern Startup Funds are the City of Oulu and the European Regional Development Fund (the Northern Ostrobothnia Centre for Economic Development, the European Union). The investment capital of Northern Startup Fund is at the moment 10 million euro.

Conexbird logo[/caption]Containers do over 135 million overseas trips per year. During every fifth of those trips something goes wrong, for instance due to container condition, accumulating over 7 billion in damages annually. Conexbird has invented a method to inspect the changes in container condition and its contents within a few seconds while lifting the container simply by touching it. There is no heavy investment required for checking equipment and no interruption nor changes required to handling and logistic chain. Furthermore the cost per check is just a fraction compared to any other method currently available. This represents true quantum leap within container transportation business, not just cost of container maintenance point of view, but also what comes to costs related to smuggling and container security.

Prior to Butterfly’s investment Conexbird has filed the key patent and signed the first pilot customer agreement.

“Our container inspection methodology fits into logistics chain like glove, it will integrate there seamlessly. Furthermore, the investment and inspection costs are only fraction of other methods. Therefore we see Conexbird as an integral part of all container logistics, a market opportunity of several billion dollars. Butterfly will bring us international contact networks that we need and such a unique level of agile business development expertise that’s very hard to find elsewhere.” (Teuvo Heikkilä, Founder of Conexbird).

Butterfly invested into Conexbird because of their clear cost saving value proposition, advanced business model, customer traction and technologically unique solution with strong intellectual property that fits extremely well into existing container logistic processes. Furthermore there’s market opportunity worth of hundreds of millions as well as excellent team with great international contact network. Butterfly’s investment will be used to validate the technology, business model and value proposition with first pilot customers.

Professional athletes use all available information to improve their performance. In golf, collecting the data requires a load of statisticians who follow the players and record each shot. Amateur golfers would love to have the same means to improve their performance as well. However, all the prior solutions either require too much concentration on manual data collection or one needs to pay big money for a live caddie to do the job. CaddieON allows automated golf data collection. The patent pending product enables the round events to be recorded shot by shot, shared and broadcasted in real time. Even better, player can compare his performance with other players and compete in all game details, not only with total round score. Instead of gadgets, you get to focus on game and play better. Now, that’s a strong value proposition for a golfer.

The CaddieOn wristband automatically detects the strokes and the club used for it. There’s no easier way to keep track of your golf game play.

CaddieON has launched the product and starting the sales in Finland during summer 2013. Prior to investment it has already announced cooperation with half a dozen golf courses in Finland and collected crowd funding from Finnish golfers worth 13 thousand euro.

”There are 60 million golfers in the world. CaddieON will lead the way in giving the golfers most value for their golf and making golf more rewarding, enjoyable and interesting than ever. The international market potential is worth several hundred millions. We wanted to have an investor who can help us with business models as well as finding the right partners. Butterfly was our best choice and shares our passion for lean customer driven development.” (Tuomo Lalli, CEO of CaddieON, Inc.)

In addition to automatically created golf game play record the CaddieOn mobile app has all the features you would expect from a golf app and there’s many more coming up.

Butterfly invested into CaddieON because the patent pending product concept allows superior ease of use and thus stronger value proposition for golfers in a market worth of several hundred millions. Furthermore the business model offers several avenues for monetization. The CaddieON team has shown both the ability and commitment. Finally their ongoing crowd funding campaign has already gained significant traction among their future customers. Butterfly investment will be used to validate value proposition and establish the required metrics to leverage the valuation up for follow-on financing rounds.

Every property owner knows that heating costs are rising year by year. Most means to save the costs are either too expensive or do not save enough to make sense economically. Sounds depressing, doesn’t it? But not for long; Fourdeg is developing a product for water radiators heated buildings that will ensure both the energy savings as well as improved comfort temperature control with a superfast investment payback. Even better, the product can be installed within minutes and installation doesn’t require professional training. If something, that’s better with less.

Fourdeg system allows energy savings in heating up to 30% through intelligent self-learning cloud driven heating optimization algorithms. In addition customers benefit from full control of the system through web and mobile as well as better living comfort through significantly improved temperature accuracy.

Before the investment Fourdeg had built first prototypes and secured first pilot customer.

”We saw from the beginning that our smart heating control system and evident demand combines as an inspiring market opportunity. But that’s not enough for a successful start-up. To thrive through the growth phase startup needs to have right kind of expertise and sufficient resources. Butterfly makes us a perfect partner by providing the both; financial resources as well as the competence.” (Markku Makkonen, CEO of Fourdeg, Inc.)

Intelligent cloud controlled thermostat that is easy to install, even by end customers, is at the core of the Fourdeg offering.

Butterfly invested into Fourdeg because of their clear value proposition, huge market potential and because the product allows use of truly revolutionary distribution channel. The Fourdeg team is leanly operating well balanced mixture of talent and it has shown commitment and ability to learn fast. Butterfly investment will be used to develop the first product version for the pilot and to validate value proposition, especially the cost savings related to the product.

The first product of WhileOnTheMove is Daisy – a complete day care solution. Daisy includes mobile applications to day care employees and child-minders, mobile/web service to day care management and mobile/web service to parents. Real life tests have shown that in a city of 100 000 habitants Daisy can relocate over 65 000 hours of manual paperwork into more important tasks; taking care of the children. Furthermore a single 24/7 daycare unit can save up to 180 000€ a year by deploying Daisy to allow parents easily inform their weekend day care needs. This value proposition together with the fact that Europe alone represents over 100 million euro market potential for such product clearly makes the case.

Before the investment WhileOnTheMove has launched their product, secured several major customers, such as cities of Oulu and Jyväskylä as well as partnered with market leading distributor in France, who has already made the first sale there.

”From the very beginning WhileOnTheMove has targeted to international markets. Today we have closed our first international partner agreements and deals. The next step is to boost even more on international sales. To achieve the goal we need both funding and guidance. We see Butterfly as a perfect partner helping us in both.” (Kari Kivistö, CEO of WhileOnTheMove)

Butterfly invested into WhileOnTheMove because their product offers good fit to market requirements that are changing and clear cost saving value proposition. The product is launched; gaining traction; and already agreed sales provide significant and relatively long term revenue. Furthermore, the WhileOnTheMove team has shown significant personal commitment and demonstrated their ability to deliver. Butterfly investment will be used to speed up the sales, especially internationally.

Use of 3D information is growing and the models used are getting more complex. Furthermore it’s not just the designers running heavy duty workstations, but many different kinds of interest groups, such as construction workers at the construction site, who need to access and collaborate with the models. CadFaster enables this in real time with a Dropbox type of business model. Their technology is more efficient than any other on the planet, enabling the use of even the most detailed models also on mobile devices such as iPad.

Due to its cloud based optimizations MyCadbox is the fastest 3D visualization engine on the planet. It can handle gigabyte level models also on mobile devices such as iPad.

Already before the investment CadFaster had launched MyCadbox service, secured a partnership with Vectorworks as well as significant number of beta users, including some from organizations such as Foster and Partners.

”CadFaster is employing a modern business model and lean customer centric product development methods. Therefore we also needed an investor who really understands these. The real added value investor makes the difference. The role of Butterfly while creating our business model and moving towards lean startup practices has been instrumental already before the investment.” (Raimo Kuismin, Chairman of CadFaster, Inc.)

Butterfly invested into CadFaster because they’re able to answer the customer need of real time 3D data collaboration with technologically advanced low barrier of entry product that is built on modern business model. This allows introduction of new customer segments into real time 3D data collaboration and thus significant growth potential. Reference customers and install base as well as proven 3D technology knowledge and a balanced team with experience were important factors as well. Furthermore, there are plenty of potential exit targets that have a history of acquisitions. Butterfly investment will be used to validate the new Dropbox like business model as well as establish the required metrics to leverage the valuation up for exit.

The ramp up of Butterfly Ventures investment activities continues at high pace; it has selected four new investment targets. The companies are: CadFaster, WhileOnTheMove, CaddieON and Fourdeg. With Butterfly Ventures investing in them, the companies will speed up their market-entry and accelerate their internationalization.

“CadFaster is employing a modern business model and lean customer centric product development methods. Therefore we also needed an investor who really understands these.” told Raimo Kuismin, Chairman of CadFaster, Inc., “The real added value investor makes the difference. The role of Butterfly while creating our business model and moving towards lean startup practices has been instrumental already before the investment.” he added.

The first investment rounds vary between approximately 40 000 and 250 000 euro, from which the Butterfly Ventures share varies from 20 000 to nearly 70 000 euro. In addition, parties have agreed on the milestone tied follow-on funding that may increase the total investment of Butterfly Ventures up to 500 000 euro per company.

”One can divide the investment targets roughly into two distinct groups; pre-seed stage companies where our investment enables the first stages of product development and seed stage companies where the focus is on product and business model validation.” said Matti Kanninen, CEO of Butterfly Ventures.

Butterfly Ventures will make first time investments in approximately ten new target companies per year. Due to investments announced now the number of invested companies rises up to seven for the year 2013. Furthermore, as some of the portfolio companies have already met the performance targets set for the follow-on investment round, follow-on investments are becoming current.

Enquiries and additional information

Butterfly Ventures

Butterfly Ventures is an early stage focused startup development and venture fund management company located in Oulu, Finland. Behind the company are Matti Kanninen, Antti Kosunen and Juho Risku as well as Board members Jukka Mäkinen and Jari Pasanen. Butterfly Ventures has offices in Oulu and Helsinki.

Northern Startup Fund

Northern Startup Fund is a venture capital fund managed by Butterfly Ventures that invest into early stage startups. It is the first asymmetric fund in Finland. In the case of Northern Startup Fund the asymmetry means that the public investor, which benefits also in a form of tax income, lowers the risk of a private investor by offering a possibility for returning the invested capital and profit share before the public investor. From the private investors’ point of view this improves the risk – return expectation ratio significantly. The investment capital of Northern Startup Fund will be 10 million €, half of which comes from the City of Oulu and the other half from private investors.